GreenGeeks Review

GreenGeeks was founded in California in 2008. Their platform is specifically geared toward being environmentally friendly and energy efficient. They host over 500,000 websites and fund more than 615,000 kwh/year in wind energy.

GreenGeeks Price

GreenGeeks has a reasonable introductory rate of $2.95/month for their basic “Lite” plan, which only supports 1 website. The renewal rate is more than triple that at $9.95/month, which is already on the higher end for some unlimited plans. The next plan up offers unlimited websites, but you’ll be stuck with an introductory price of $5.95/month and a whopping $14.95/month for a considerably pricey renewal.

We love that they donate to a renewable energy non-profit based on the energy they use, and you certainly can’t put a price on saving the planet, so we’ve still given them an 8/10 for Price. But unless you’ve got a reason to advertise the fact that you’re using eco-friendly hosting, find a cheaper host and switch to LEDs at the office instead.

GreenGeeks Performance

GreenGeeks spans five data centers, although four of those are located in North America so their worldwide coverage isn’t ideal, with nothing in the vicinity of India, Australia, or most of Asia. Response times and page load speeds were consistent and in-line with what we would expect from accessing a North American server from North America. They advertise an uptime of 99.9%, which they very nearly reached over 6 months of monitoring. We did notice a slight dip in performance after the initial 30 days which was initially worrying, but over the long-term GreenGeeks met and maintained their high standards for performance.

GreenGeeks Support

GreenGeeks has email, chat, and phone support, which is standard, however they do not have 24/7 support for all three, which is usually also standard. They do provide an extensive knowledgebase for self-sufficient folks, but if you want to speak with an actual human, you’ll need to wait. Our emails usually got responses within half an hour, which is around their quoted 15-20 minute wait time, and while their chat may not be available “instantly”, it was fairly close.

While the technical knowledge is there, and the reps resolved our issues and answered our questions, a lot of it was muddied up by their tendency to upsell you. More complicated or complex issues can take a while to work through when a different person responds back each time, and while the initial ticket responses were timely, follow-up/clarifying questions might be in for a longer wait. Not the best support out there, but certainly not the worst.

GreenGeeks Usability

GreenGeeks falls squarely within acceptable usability standards.They offer mainstream easy-to-use website builders like WordPress and other Softaculous apps, and use the cPanel control panel which is fairly easy to navigate. Services and features are clearly listed on both their website and within the platform. They also have an organized and extensive knowledgebase which covers pretty much all the services and features they offer. Their billing terms and policies were not as upfront or easy to find information about, which is quite common among hosts but only a minor fault. We were especially impressed by the list of resources in their footer, which includes detailed blog posts explaining how to get started depending on your individual needs.

GreenGeeks Features

GreenGeeks has a wide-ranging and comprehensive list of features, most of which are included in their plans. Besides the standard user-end features like website builders, databases, shopping carts, and the like, GreenGeeks offers plenty of security features that run on the back-end. This includes automatic app updates, hardware & power redundancy, nightly backups, and real-time security scanning among others. They also have a set of features specifically aimed at developers, like SSH access, Perl & Python support, multiple PHP versions, and Git. And while it may not technically be a “feature”, their investment in renewable energy is definitely a perk for many, and deserves another mention based solely on the fact that they’re the only “green” host we’ve come across.

Conclusion

GreenGeeks is the best choice hands-down if you’re a business or non-profit dealing in environmentalism, renewable energy, or saving the planet. A lot of websites that host with GreenGeeks advertise that they’re using eco-friendly hosting for this reason. But if you’re more concerned about pricing or having a strong support team backing you up, there are better hosts out there—and nothing stopping you from saving the planet in other ways.